A Comparison of Local and Global Databases for the Environmental Impact of Residential Buildings

Abstract

The construction sector significantly contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions, which is particularly relevant in emerging economies as Brazil. The Brazilian initiative of SIDAC (Construction Environmental Performance Information System) and the development of new tools aim to provide national data for assessing environmental impacts. A method that uses such data is the Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment (WBLCA), which is a systematic tool for evaluating a building’s environmental impacts throughout its life cycle, including resource consumption, emissions, and waste generation. Due to the complexity of obtaining local data for WBLCA, the Ecoinvent database has been widely used due to its comprehensive dataset. However, its applicability to the Brazilian context can be limited due to regional variations in production processes. In this context, this study compares the performance of national (SIDAC) and international (Ecoinvent) databases using simplified WBLCA models for embodied carbon and single-point scores. The assessment focuses on phases A1 to A3, covering the embodied impacts from the extraction of materials to the construction. Three single-family residential buildings were assessed. The results highlight the differences between the databases. For instance, concrete has a much higher relevance using the SIDAC data and carbon emissions, while all other materials present less relevance in the overall impact. Also, one highlights the difference between carbon accounting, which uses carbon emissions in SIDAC and equivalent carbon emissions in Ecoinvent. However, one can conclude that SIDAC is a promising tool for Brazilian WBLCA, providing an easy way to calculate the building’s impacts.